A little advice regarding court claim

jamesb1239

Hi, sorry if this is in the wrong section, I couldn’t really decide where would be best. My wife suffers with mental health issues including Bipolar Type 2 and similar to many in this situation has a severe case of ostrich syndrome! Over the weekend I found a County Court Claim Form that she had hidden away in a ‘deal with later’ pile and never mentioned.
I explained to her that this is a lot more serious than the usual debt collection letters with the threatening language at which point a look of panic came over her.

After having a quick look through the Claim Form I noticed that she was at the very end of her 14 days to respond so I got her to call the Claimant, she was told that no matter what they were submitting the claim and getting a CCJ against her unless she could come up with full payment there and then. She offered to make monthly payments (a bit late I know). The lady on the phone told her that she would need to complete an Income and Expenditure form and submit it to them and told her that they would give her an extra week to submit this to them however they would still be seeking the CCJ whether she agreed monthly payments or not however the Income and Expenditure form would just be used to decide how much the repayments would be set at by the court as part of the CCJ. I don’t really know how this works or if that is correct or not as the only court dealings that I have ever had were from a parking ticket that I defended.

My question here is basically is there anything that I can do here to help her avoid the CCJ or is that inevitable? As soon as I found out about the Claim Form I went on to the Court website and completed the Acknowledgement of Service for her to extend the 14 days although that may have been just delaying the inevitable however it gave me time to seek a little advice and Google around a little.

The Claim is for £2378 which comprises of £2193.75 debt, £105 Court Fee and £80 Legal Representative’s Costs.
The Claimant is a company called ME IV LIMITED and the person that is dealing with it is RESTONS SOLICITORS LIMITED.
The debt is owed to Everything Everywhere (EE).

A quick thought however it may not be relevant, My wife claims to have never heard of ME IV Limited, never recieved any letters from them and also never recieved anything to say that the debt had been passed on/sold to this ME IV Limited. I cannot be 100% that this statement by her is true however as she generally hides/destroys this kind of thing however when I read the form to her she was adamant she had never heard the name and she usually at least knows what Debt Collectors are writing to her even if she doesn’t know what they wrote to say.
Also I never actually recall my Wife having any dealings with EE however I know she used Orange for a spell so I assume it could be that and it just shows as EE since their merger? Although I would have thought Orange would still be mentioned somewhere.

Thank you in advance for any assistance that anybody may be able to offer.

fatbelly

You did the right thing in acknowledging service.

The deadline for responding is now 28 days from service date, where service is 5 days after issue date, so you may have a bit longer than you thought.

That sounds like a very large debt for a mobile phone debt. It's worth a cpr request to the solicitors, but you can't do a cca request on a phone debt.

Try

http://www.legalbeagles.info/forums/forumdisplay.php?105-Received-a-Court-Claim

for advice

jamesb1239

Thank you, yes that’s what I thought when I seen the amount too but during her worst times and before it all came to a head and she was diagnosed she ran up quite a lot of debt and was rather reckless so it doesn’t surprise me. Hopefully there will be light at the end of the tunnel eventually though

sourcrates

Hi,

EE (formally Orange) are one and the same.

The average cost of a 24 month mobile contract for a smartphone would be around the £2160 mark just in line rental.

So that sounds about right to me, dependent on when the account defaulted of course.

patman99

If your wife attends Court with you as her lay rep and you have completed an SoA to use as part of your submitted defence pack, the chances of them getting a CCJ are very slim.

At worst, the judge would give a time limit for payment to be made. At best, the Judge will set a repayment plan within your budget. A CCJ will only happen if you fail to pay.

fatbelly

Patman - they're going to get a ccj unless they have a defence - and they may not have one.

An alternative to a defence may be a Tomlin Order - legalbeagles can advise.

There won't be a hearing unless there's a defence worth considering.

jamesb1239

I have made a post on LegalBegals and hopefully will go from there. Thank you again for all of your help here

Carrot007

sourcrates wrote: »

Hi,

EE (formally Orange) are one and the same.

The average cost of a 24 month mobile contract for a smartphone would be around the £2160 mark just in line rental.

So that sounds about right to me, dependent on when the account defaulted of course.

£90 a month for line rental? Average? I don't think so.